Big Change, Starting Now!

When we launched the Stepitup07.org campaign in early January, we didn't know what to expect. We put up a Web site and started circulating e-mails asking people to organize rallies for April 14. The first day 30 groups signed up, and the day after that 40, and before the week was out we'd already exceeded our wildest expectations. By early February we'd soared past the 500-rally mark, making it very clear that this would be the biggest demonstration about global warming yet in this country, and perhaps the biggest day of environmental protest in this country since the first Earth Day, in 1970.

We told people that we weren't really organizing in the traditional sense. Instead, it was more like an invitation to a party -- a potluck. Bring your best ideas, your creativity, your hopes. People began responding immediately -- especially with ideas for actions in iconic places to dramatize the impact of climate change. Teams of scuba divers will hold underwater rallies (with waterproof banners!) off the endangered coral reefs of Maui and Key West. Others will hang signs from the Shawangunk Mountains of New York State, or ski off the dwindling glaciers above Jackson Hole. In New York and other cities, activists will paint blue stripes where the new high-water mark will be once the seas start to rise. On and on.

The protesters come from every kind of background. Extreme athletes and seasoned environmentalists, sure. NRDC is helping organize a rally on the shrinking ice fields of Glacier National Park; the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, and many smaller groups are planning events. But there are also church groups, chapters of the League of Women Voters, nature centers, and campus groups. Hollywood is on the front lines, led by Al Gore's producer, Laurie David. MUSE, a group of musicians, is posting dozens of new songs to our site every week; graphic artists are producing posters; and podcasters are producing, well, podcasts. It's mostly volunteer and it's a little homemade, and that's one reason it seems to be working. We knew we were on the right track when a digital picture arrived showing 180 smiling sorority sisters from Alpha Phi House at the University of Texas. "We wanted to show it wasn't just hippies who care," they said. Long live the hippie-sorority alliance!

The hope is that a distributed demonstration like this will let congressional representatives know that in every voting district in the country global warming is emerging as a potent issue, one to be ignored at their electoral peril. By the close of the day on April 14, we should have a cascade of pictures of these gatherings that will, we hope, prove irresistible to the media, and that we'll be able to make good use of on You-Tube and the rest of the Web. When the day is over we'll move on -- we're not an organization, just an idea. But an idea whose time -- we hope -- has finally come.